Students experiment with green ideas

NEW DELHI, Jan 16: The little messengers were everywhere. They had a sense of purpose and alertness about them when they spoke about the iss...

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NEW DELHI, Jan 16: The little messengers were everywhere. They had a sense of purpose and alertness about them when they spoke about the issues involved. Their audience was mostly school children. While some were seen discussing issues and participating in the quiz and the poster competition, others watched, with rapt attention, a street play put up by their friends.

The occasion was an environment awareness mela organised by a NGO, Development Alternatives. There were stalls put up by participating schools with tiny models of the save-our-environment projects each had undertaken. And each stall was manned by a school representative who briefed the audience about the way the model worked.

The demonstrations were meant to provide suggestions for environmental improvement at the community level. For instance, the Naval Public School had put up models on water conservation. The project titled – Rain in the rooftops – talked about methods for using rain water to maximum capacity and thus saving precious drinking water. These include the bamboo drip irrigation system, the 200-year-old system still used in Meghalaya and the drip-a-drop bucket kit.

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The purpose of the mela was to provide an opportunity for children to express their feelings and concern about the deteriorating environmental conditions in the city. And to nurture responsible citizenship among the people of Delhi. As the NGO director, Ashok Khosla, said, no one could better reach out to unconcerned adults than children themselves.

A public hearing will be organised today from 10 p.m. to 1 p.m. which will include presentations by children about the deteriorating environmental conditions in the city and their right to a clean environment.

Representatives from the MCD, the Pollution Control Board and Resident Welfare Associations will answer quarries from the children.

The programme will be extended to other states too in the near future. In this connection, a group of students had undertaken a Yamuna yatra to find about the cause of the pollution in the river and to examine possible solutions.

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“At the end of the day, when you realise that grown-ups have taken you seriously like they did in Vrindavan, it’s a heady feeling,” says Madhumita Chatterjee, a Lady Shri Ram college second year student, who has been involved with the yatra and the programme since her school days.

Development Alternatives launched the Delhi Environment Action Network (DEAN) programme in 1996. DEAN is a part of the nationwide Community Led Environment Action Network (CLEAN) programme. The programme emphasizes environment education among school children as a means of promoting environmental awareness and action among the people of Delhi. Currently, DEAN is anchored by nearly 600 students from 12 schools.

As part of the programme, school children had been trained in monitoring and assessing the environmental quality of selected areas using field testing kits developed by Development Alternatives.